A cold front approaching the central Florida area already is pushing clouds into the area and NASA at this time would be "no-go" for low cloud ceilings.
NASA flight rules call for cloud ceiling to be high enough so a commander could spot the runway and guide the shuttle to a safe touchdown in the event a systems failure in flight forced an unprecedented emergency landing.
Range safety officers also must have a clear view of the shuttle during the early portions of flight. The range officers would be responsible for sending deliberate destruct signals to the shuttle's solid rocket boosters if the spaceship careened out of control and threatened towns and cities outside the gates to Kennedy Space Center.
Mission commander Steve Frick was the first to climb through the side hatch of the shuttle. Members of a NASA-contractor "Close-Out Crew" are helping him strap into the left seat on the flight deck of the orbiter.
The astronauts arrived at the launch pad about 11:22 a.m. and then took a cramped elevator up to the 195-foot-level of the launch gantry. The astronauts then crossed a metal catwalk and enter the so-called "White Room," where the a half-dozen pad workers are helping them don parachute packs.
The shuttle is equipped with a crew escape system that is made up an 8.75-foot telescoping pole that would be extended out of the shuttle's side hatch in an emergency. And then one by one, the astronauts would hook a parachute harness to the 248-pound pole and make the plunge out of the ship and toward the ocean.
The escape pole plays a critical role: Without it, an astronaut likely would slam into the shuttle's left wing or one of two humplike pods that house orbital maneuvering engines on the tail end of Atlantis.
The shuttle crew is trained to bail out at an altitude of about 20,000 feet so that all of the astronauts would be out of the ship before it had descended to an altitude of 10,000 feet.
The astronauts likely will hit the water about a mile apart from each other - bobbing along a line that follows Atlantis' northeast flight path. Their survival could depend on their 70-pound partial pressure suits, which are routinely worn during launch and landing.
The pumpkin-orange suits - a post-Challenger upgrade - are equipped with not only a parachute but a built-in life preserver, its own air supply and a backpack with a small collapsible life raft.
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